Economic Justice
Ensuring a fair and equitable distribution of resources, opportunities, and economic benefits in society so that all Londoners can thrive by tackling poverty, reducing income gaps and wealth inequalities.
How London’s grassroots organisations helped shape the first round of our Economic Justice funding programme
People’s Economy undertook specialist stakeholder engagement to inform the development of the first round of our Economic Justice funding: Communities Building Economic Change. In this blog, they summarise the process and share some of the key learning.
- Author: People’s Economy
- Published: 19 October 2026
Our economy isn’t something that happens somewhere else. It’s the food on our tables, the homes we live in, the heating we can or can’t afford, and the jobs, care, transport and community spaces we all rely on. Right now, London’s economy is failing many people across the city and deepening structural inequalities, including those relating to race, class, gender and disability.
Grassroots organisations see the effects of this every day, from rising rents to insecure work to the struggle to cover the basics, and they often understand better than anyone why these problems keep happening. Many are already doing important economic change work, often without calling it that, and are showing in practice that our economy could be organised differently.
At People’s Economy, we support these groups in their role in building a fairer economy, so we see up close how hard it is to work on the causes of injustice while also firefighting its effects. This community-level work is some of the most important economic change work happening in London. It is rooted in lived experience and the knowledge that comes with it, yet it is rarely recognised or valued in the way it needs to be. We see it as a vital, and badly under-resourced, part of the wider economic change field, and one where funding can make a real difference.
Shaping the programme with grassroots organisations
We brought all of this with us when we were invited to help involve London-based groups in shaping City Bridge Foundation’s new Economic Justice programme, Communities Building Economic Change. We work alongside grassroots groups every day and know how urgent the need is and how stretched so many groups are — we didn’t take the task lightly.
It mattered to us to use everyone’s time and energy carefully, and help funding to start flowing as quickly as we could. Part of this was accepting that there’s no perfect end point. There will always be more voices to hear and more questions to ask, and engagement could easily have continued indefinitely. So we drew clear boundaries and set out to find a strong starting place, trusting that a ten-year programme has room to keep listening, learning and evolving with the groups it supports.
What we heard
Earlier this year, we started to map community-led economic justice work across London, held one-to-one interviews with people involved in different kinds of change work across the city, and ran two focus groups. We spoke with community-rooted groups who brought a real range of views and experiences, from different parts of London and with different lived experiences of the economy and of structural inequality.
Together, we explored many questions including what groups needed from funding, what felt missing in the current landscape, and the unique role City Bridge Foundation could play. We then invited groups to test proposals for the programme design based on what we’d heard.
Participants brought real care and thought to this process. They shared their experiences generously, challenged our assumptions, and pointed out where more clarity or consideration was needed. We were really moved by how much people looked beyond their own work and considered the whole ecosystem of organisations working for change. They kept coming back to what’s needed for the shared mission of building a just and fair economy in London.
The conversations themselves were a joy to be part of. There was honesty, humour and a strong sense of solidarity throughout them. People recognised their own experiences in each other’s stories, built on each other’s ideas, and spoke with both frustration at how things are and real hope for what could change.
Groups shared so much with us, but these are some of the points we really want to lift up:
Meeting immediate needs and changing systems go hand in hand
An organisation supporting people facing poverty might also be challenging insecure employment, unaffordable housing, or the way wealth is taken out of communities. Their everyday work gives them important insight into what needs to change, but the pressure of meeting immediate needs can leave little time or resources to act on that knowledge in a strategic and sustained way.
Many felt that frontline work and systems change are too often treated, especially by funders, as an either/or issue, seen as separate or competing when in truth they’re deeply interconnected. They felt this fund had a real opportunity to challenge that by backing some of the most exciting, grounded and overlooked systems change work across the city – work that grows out of meeting people’s immediate needs.
Economic justice work doesn’t fit neatly into categories
Groups spoke about how issues like housing, employment, migration, food and poverty overlap in people’s lives. They questioned approaches that divide economic justice funding into narrow themes from the start of the programme, which can make it harder for organisations responding to several connected issues to get support.
They worried it would fragment work, push organisations to bend their applications to fit, and weaken the joined-up approaches already happening on the ground. Keeping things wider leaves room for people to see how their struggles connect, recognise shared root causes, and build stronger alliances across them.
Language matters
People described economic injustice through the realities they see every day: the cost of living, housing, affordability, insecure work. Some shared how on its own “economic justice” can sound abstract, as if it’s about something separate and far away, rather than the conditions shaping people’s lives, and that groups might not recognise their own work in it.
Participants encouraged naming things plainly, including the ways wealth is extracted from communities, and their feedback on specific words and phrases helped shape how the programme describes itself so that groups can see themselves in it.
Community-rooted means more than working in a community
Participants emphasised the importance of lived experience, genuine community decision-making and real accountability, along with the care and discernment needed to understand whether work is truly community-rooted.
These relationships matter because they make sure the people most affected by economic injustice have a meaningful role in shaping responses to it. Without that rootedness, vital knowledge, perspectives and ideas about what needs to change – and how – can be lost.
Putting the learning into practice
This community engagement reinforced the importance of long-term, core and flexible funding. It also showed the difference it makes when groups shape how that funding is delivered. We often heard how much people valued being involved early enough to really influence the fund’s design, and we could feel the impact of this when we shared draft proposals in later stages.
We really appreciated City Bridge Foundation’s commitment to listening to organisations and thinking about what their experiences and contributions meant for this new programme. The newly launched programme, Communities Building Economic Change, starts from the position that organisations deeply rooted in their communities are best placed to understand the lived experience of economic injustice and the changes needed.
It will fund organisations that understand the lived realities of economic injustice and have a track record of using insights from frontline work to shape systemic work on its causes, in one or more of three priority areas: building shared understanding of the economy and what needs to change; securing the basics everyone needs; and giving communities greater power over decisions that affect their lives.
We’re honoured to have helped develop a programme focused on community-rooted economic justice, and so grateful to everyone who shared their time, experiences and ideas with us. Their insights grounded our recommendations in the realities of grassroots work and raised important questions about how this work can be properly recognised and supported in the longer term.
We hope this programme is one step towards a funding landscape that truly values the economic change work happening in communities across London. This is just the beginning, and we’re excited to see how the programme grows and adapts over the next ten years, shaped by the communities at its heart.
Read more about what we heard (PDF): Economic Justice Programme — Summary of engagement Sept 2026
Explore the Communities Building Economic Change funding opportunity. Applications close at 12 noon on Tuesday, 3 November 2026.
More about People’s Economy
People’s Economy works with communities hit hardest by economic injustice, supporting them to build the collective power and agency to understand and transform the economic system. We believe the people most affected are best placed to lead that transformation.
We start with what communities already know; through economics education, training, network building and supportive facilitation, we work with groups to connect local experiences to systemic causes and develop their own strategies for change. Find out more about our work on our website: People’s Economy